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Building monitor hailed as hero for thwarting shooter

SEATTLE — A campus shooting that killed one and injured three others would have been more dire if another student had not acted quickly, said a professor who witnessed the violence. Associate Professor Kevin

Building monitor hailed as hero for thwarting shooter

The Seattle Pacific University campus shooting that killed one and injured three others would have been more dire if another student had not acted quickly, said a professor who witnessed the violence.
VPC

Heather Graf, KING-TV, Seattle
8:42 p.m. EDT June 6, 2014

Shooting suspect Aaron Ybarra is led to a court hearing at a King County Jail courtroom Friday, June 6, 2014, in Seattle. Ybarra was arrested in the killing of a 19-year-old student and wounding of two other young people Thursday at Seattle Pacific University. Police say another student pepper-sprayed and tackled him.(Photo: AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Associate Professor Kevin Bolding, chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department at Seattle Pacific University, said he heard gunshots about 3:30 p.m. PT Thursday as he sat in his office, so he picked up his phone and called 911.

"I heard a shot outside my window and saw a man laying on the ground and a person holding a gun over him," said Bolding, who then heard another shot inside the building. "And I looked down from my office and saw one of my students sitting on top of somebody, and a big pile of shell casings. As far as I know, he tackled the shooter, took him out and saved us all."

In a statement filed in court Friday, Seattle police detectives wrote that the shooter, identified as Aaron R. Ybarra, 26, wanted to kill as many people as possible before killing himself.

But a student building monitor at Otto Miller Hall on campus confronted Ybarra, pepper-spraying him as he stopped to reload his shotgun. Engineering student Jon Meis, 22, then tackled him and subdued him with the help of others.

"If he hadn't done that, we would've been in much bigger trouble," Bolding said.

Meis has been a student security monitor and teaching assistant at the university, a 4,300-student private Christian school north of downtown, since January 2012, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has been an intern at Boeing since June 2013.

The student was among the four transported to Seattle's Harborview Medical Center. A spokeswoman there said Friday that Meis wasn't injured but was suffering from mental anguish. He was treated and released Thursday.

"I was amazed that he was willing to risk all that for us," said Roman Kukhotskiy, 22, who was in the building when the violence broke out. If Jon didn't stop him, what's to say? I could have been the next victim."

He said Meis is getting married this summer and has accepted a job with Boeing.

Meis' family in Renton, Wash., had a message on the answering machine: "We ask that you please respect our privacy during this time while we recover." It also asked for prayers for the family of the student killed and for the university's surviving students.

Bolding was visibly shaken as he left the building Thursday, as were many of the students and staff that were on lockdown during the shooting and the investigation that followed.

Paul Lee, 19, a freshman from Portland, Ore., died Thursday after being taken to the hospital. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray called Lee a "Korean-American student with a bright future."

“If he hadn't done that, we would've been in much bigger trouble.”

Kevin Bolding, Seattle Pacific University

Student Sarah Williams. 19, is in serious condition in the intensive care unit with wounds to her chest and abdomen and is now breathing on her own, officials said Friday afternoon. A 24-year-old male student, whose name was not released, is in satisfactory condition with pellet fragment wounds to his neck and chin and could go home Saturday.

The accused shooter was hospitalized twice in recent years for mental health evaluations, police in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., about 15 miles north of Seattle said. Assistant Chief Pete Caw said officers encountered Ybarra in 2010 and 2012.

Both times Ybarra was severely intoxicated and was taken to a hospital for evaluation, Caw said. In the October 2012 incident, officers found him lying in a roadway.

Ybarra's lawyer, public defender Ramona Brandes, said her client has long had mental health problems and is on suicide watch at the jail.

"We are so very shocked and sad over yesterday's shootings at SPU," Ybarra's family said in a statement. "We are crushed at the amount of pain caused to so many people. To the victims and their families, our prayers are with you."

Jason Wells said he met Ybarra at a bar and stayed friends. Wells thought Ybarra had an alcohol problem, so he took him under his wing.

"He seemed like a good kid, but he was dislodged from reality a little bit," Wells said. "I tried to get him on the right track, even letting him sleep on my couch. He kind of looked at me like a big brother."

Following the lift of a lockdown in the wake of a school shooting, Seattle Pacific University students pray together June 5, 2014.(Photo: Jordan Stead, AP)

Wells didn't remember any talk from Ybarra about guns or Seattle Pacific University, but he said his friend did act strangely at times.

"He would say, 'I'm going to kill everyone,' " Wells said. "I never took him seriously."

Seattle police said they have not determined the gunman's motive or intended target. Ybarra was not a student at the school.

Edmonds Community College officials said Ybarra had been a student there but had not taken classes since summer 2012.

Seattle Pacific student Chris Howard helped two of the students who were injured Thursday.

"I was working on a project in machine shop after I was done with classes for the day. I'm just dremeling and doing stuff that you do in the machine shop and one of my friends from thermodynamics class rushes in — obviously frantic and looking behind him — and first thing he says is, 'Close the door behind me. Are the other doors locked?' " Howard said.

"One person runs to the garage door and closes it, and we start ripping the first aid kit off of the wall because he had a couple of marks on his neck that were bleeding, Howard said. "We didn't know what happened."

Howard and others in the room put gauze on the victim's neck as he mentioned the shooting. Then Howard went to find additional medical help.

“He would say, 'I'm going to kill everyone.' I never took him seriously.”

Jason Wells, friend of the accused shooter

"(In) the hallway in the part of the machine shop, I see another student kneeling over someone that's lying down," he said. "I see the person who's lying down, their chest is red and appears to have a tourniquet around their arm. I basically get instructed to have her head on my lap."

Her phone was covered in blood, but she asked those helping her to look through her phone for her mother, aunt and best friend.

At least three fatal shootings have taken place on college campuses across the USA since the beginning of the year: In January, teaching assistant killed a fellow TA at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Later that month, a student killed another student at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C. In March, police officers at Columbus State University in Georgia killed a man seen loading a gun near on-campus apartments.

Other universities have been put in lockdown as shooters wounded students who survived. Still other shootings, including a May 23 rampage that killed six in Isla Vista, Calif., have taken place near campuses.

Friday was to have been the final day of classes for the spring quarter at Seattle Pacific University. They were canceled, but faculty was asked to come to campus to be available to students.

The university had a prayer service at noon PT at First Free Methodist Church on campus. Final exams are next week.

Contributing: The Associated Press

A group of people pray together June 6, 2014, near a sign on the Seattle Pacific University campus that reads "We Will Overcome This," the day after a shooting took place at Otto Miller Hall at the school. (Photo: Ted S. Warren, AP)

Tara, a student who declined to give her last name, uses her water bottle to water flowers June 6, 2014, at a memorial at Seattle Pacific University near Otto Miller Hall, where a shooting took place the previous afternoon (Photo: Ted S. Warren, AP)

Police officers and detectives search a home in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., believed to be tied to Aaron R. Ybarra, who was arrested June 5, 2014, following a shooting at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle. (Photo: Ted S. Warren, AP)

Seattle Pacific University students and faculty pray together at First Free Methodist Church on campus following a shooting that left one dead and multiple injured June 5, 2014, at the university in Seattle. (Photo: Jordan Stead, AP)

Brianna Clarke, left, cries as she talks on her phone while Erin Rutledge, right, an athletic trainer at Seattle Pacific University, is hugged by a colleague at the scene of the shooting. (Photo: Ted S. Warren, AP)

Ashley Eller and Elizabeth Walsh, two students contained during the lockdown at the university, cross the street after being released at Seattle Pacific University. (Photo: Matt Mills McKnight, European Pressphoto Agency)

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Mass shootings on or near campus

A look at some of the worst shootings on or near college campuses in the past 10 years.

• May 23. Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured seven more before turning his gun on himself in a rampage in Isla Vista, Calif., near two universities, according to police.

• June 7, 2013. Five people are killed and several others are wounded when John Zawahri, 23, shoots his father and brother then shoots at strangers in cars and at Santa Monica College, where students were taking final exams.

• April 2, 2012. Seven people are killed and three are injured when a 43-year-old former student opens fire at a tiny Christian school, Oikos University, in Oakland, Calif.

• Feb. 14, 2008. Five students are killed and 18 are wounded when former student Steven Kazmierczak, 27, opens fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, before committing suicide.

• Feb. 8, 2008. Two people are killed when Latina Williams, 23, opens fire during an emergency medical technology class at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge, La., before shooting herself.

• April 16, 2007. Thirty-two people are fatally shot in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., before the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, 23, kills himself.

• Sept. 2, 2006. Two people are killed when gunman Douglas W. Pennington, 49, shoots his sons before killing himself during a visit to Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va.